


Drink It Anyway

by CatLovePower



Series: I'll Stay Awake [1]
Category: Trench - Twenty One Pilots (Album), Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Trench (Album), Angst, Blood and Violence, DEMA (Twenty One Pilots), Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Magical Realism, Suicide Attempt, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-13
Updated: 2019-09-13
Packaged: 2020-09-24 06:59:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20354302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatLovePower/pseuds/CatLovePower
Summary: In which Tyler works for DEMA, a multinational corporation selling hot beverages, and Josh is a member of a gang called the Banditos, creating a wave of social unrest and rioting throughout the city. In other words, they meet in a coffee shop.





	Drink It Anyway

**Author's Note:**

> Losely inspired by the album Trench.

Josh Dun wasn’t planning on going to a coffee shop that evening; in fact, it’s been a while since he even approached chain restaurants, with their standardized offers and their zombified employees. But right now, he needs a respite from the chaos outside, to get away from the tear gas and the shouting. Just for a minute, he thinks, then he’ll go back out again and he’ll carry on hating multinationals and wishing for the end of capitalism.

He takes his yellow bandana off his face and lets it hang loosely around his neck. He runs a shaky hand through his hair, dirty yellow fading from an old dye job, and feels like a bull in china shop all of a sudden. He feels watched, even though no one greets him and the place is nearly empty. It’s not surprising, as the near constant demonstrations have made the neighborhood quite unsafe.

There is smooth jazz playing in the background and the contrast with the revolt outside is jarring. He comes closer to the counter and glances at the menu above, patting his pockets for cash or change. A sign with an arrow indicates where the line starts but Josh is not good at following directions and he walks straight to the register, going above the cordon. There is no one anyway.

“Never use credit cards, that’s how they get you,” he explains to the cashier, who looks dispassionate as hell. His brown eyes seem almost dead, with dark circles under them. He doesn’t even raise his head to look at Josh. He has a cut on his nose, healing, scabbed over, and for some reason it bothers Josh. He doesn’t seem like the fighting type and it doesn’t sit right with Josh.

The name tag on his black company shirt reads “Tyler”. When he turns to make Josh’s latte, he can read DEMA in big embroidered letters on the back. _Delicious Espressos Made Admirably_.

There is nothing admirable in the way Tyler makes his drink though. He could be sleepwalking, for all Josh knows, and the result would be roughly the same. The machine hisses, spitting dark poison into a paper cup; steamed milk threatens to spill everywhere, as his hand shakes when he pours it. There are no decorative flowers in the foam, and Tyler pushes the cup towards him on the counter, with a vague gesture to the sugar and napkins behind Josh, like he couldn’t care less.

The coffee tastes burnt, and the sugar he adds to it is weird, like grains of sand on his tongue. He’s about to sit when a feeling a dread washes over him. There is an old man looking at him from behind the counter, unblinking, his face set in a grim expression; he wears a red apron and his hands are black, covered in grease or something. Josh shudders and ducks back outside instead.

||-//

Much, much later, back at the camp they set in the occupied banking district, Josh toys with a leaflet from that coffee shop in his coat pocket, and he wonders what the kid with the hollow eyes think of their revolution, if he even knows about it.

Their fight is well underway, the city is paralyzed with strikes on a scale unheard of, but late at night, when it’s just a bunch of them, camping in tents on the steps of the courthouse, it feels way smaller, scarier. When the protests are silent at night, and the fumes from the tear gas have settled down, he wonders if it’s worth it.

“Whatcha doing?” Mark plops beside him on the cold stairs of the building, scooting closer to the fire they keep at night.

Josh takes the leaflet from his pocket and throws it in the fire. The flames burn green and blue for a second, and the paper hisses and twists like a wounded animal.

“Just thinking,” Josh says with a shrug.

He doesn’t want to discuss DEMA, not yet. Mark would probably suggest they burn the place down. Josh is sure he’d love to film that and post it on his YouTube channel, ‘_News from Trench_.’

||-//

The second time Josh enters DEMA, it’s to hide from riot police. They were trying to tag messages on billboards farther down the street, him, Jenna and a few others, but things got out of hand way too quickly. Rocks were thrown, threats were barked. Spray-paint cans explode when heated up, it turns out.

They all ran in different directions and Josh pushed the door of the coffee shop without even thinking. He’s drawn to this place, it seems, and he wonders why, as he tries to catch his breath by the door, hunched over with his hands on his thighs.

This time there are a few customers around, but not a single one looks up from their smartphones or laptops. Free WIFI will do that. Free lobotomy, more like it. A girl with pink hair is trying to get a shot of her cup and a muffin. Her name on the cup is undecipherable; it looks like hieroglyphs or code. Either it’s a new fad, or the barista had a stroke when he wrote it.

Josh approaches the counter and pretends to be a normal customer, not a hooligan. His heart sinks a bit for a reason he can’t explain when he sees the man behind the counter. It isn’t the sad kid from last time. This one has very short hair and his eyes are also vacant, but blue; there are no tattoos on his bare arms.

Josh is about to order something when the door slams open behind him. The barista with the buzz cut doesn’t even flinch, he just stares ahead, but Josh sees his shoulders tense a little, and his knuckles whiten as he grips the edge of the counter.

“Freeze, police,” a man shouts in his back, and Josh puts his hands on this head before kneeling down slowly. He knows the drill.

Any incriminating evidence – spray cans, gas masks, the crowbar they used to pry open the door to the service stairwell – has been discarded earlier in an alleyway, but they probably have CCTV footage. The bandana always helps a little, it hinders investigations, but his bright yellow hair is probably a mistake.

They twist his arms in his back and bind his wrists with zip ties. And as they are dragging him in front of still unfazed customers – the girl with pink hair is apparently trying to take a selfie with his arrest in the background – he catches the barista’s eye. It’s like looking at someone through water. His face ripples and morphs, his hair changes, short, long, short again. The name tags reads “Tyler” and Josh wonders if the spray paint fumes got to his head.

||-//

It’s midnight or so (he’s not sure, he got rid of his watch when he joined the revolution, because time was a social construct, and one shouldn’t be bound by it, as Jenna liked to say) when the police sets him free. Lack of compelling evidence, a very tired officer states, before stamping his release papers. The courthouse is occupied and justice can hardly process anyone as it is.

It’s late, but Josh doesn’t go back the camp. Instead he goes all the way back to the coffee shop where he was arrested. It’s still open and Josh notes with a smile that someone – Jenna probably – tagged “stop police brutality” in big yellow letters on the shop window.

He feels silly when he pushes the door. There is a web of cracks on the glass, and everybody working there probably hates his rebel guts by now.

The place is quiet and dark, but Tyler’s there, standing stiffly behind the register. Josh smiles and Tyler just looks ahead, lost in his world. When Josh comes closer, he gasps because even in the half-light, he can see that his left cheekbone is bruised and his eye is so puffy it’s nearly closed.

It looks painful. Josh wants to shake Tyler and ask him who did that, then beat them to a pulp until his knuckles hurt. But Josh knows nothing about fighting and the question dies in his throat like a strangled scream.

Instead he orders a fancy drink from their seasonal menu, because it takes a little longer to make and maybe he can build up the courage to just do something. Josh doesn’t like injustice. The espresso machine makes a worrying noise, and the grinder looks stuck. Tyler seems about to break down crying and Josh can see his shoulders hitch as if he’s holding back a sob.

“You know, it’s okay if it’s broken, I can order something else...”

Tyler is muttering something over and over, not acknowledging his efforts to help, holding on the counter for dear life.

Josh leans forward, and honestly he doesn’t know what he’s trying to do. Listen to the quiet litany coming from the barista or shake him out of his trance. Maybe unplug the machine to put it out of its misery.

But then it’s sputtering ground beans, and Tyler starts working, his hands shaking ever so slightly. He’s still talking and when he turns back, Josh swears it sounds like, “Not done, not done, Josh Dun.”

Josh blinks and puts a fiver on the counter. His name is on the cup and he can’t recall saying it out loud. His eyebrows rise quizzically and Tyler’s good eye locks on him for a second. Then the spell is broken and he’s left with an overpriced, overheated whatever this is in a damn paper cup.

||-//

He jumps when Tyler flops down on the seat in front of him. He drops a mop on the floor, next to a bucket full of muddy water. Josh is pretty sure he shouldn’t be talking to customers, but who is he to criticize. He’s still curious after all.

“How did you know my name?” he asks – even though what he really wants to say is “who broke your face?” and “were you bald earlier today?”

Tyler seems to consider the question for a second. His index finger traces lines in the sugar on the table. He licks it and makes a face.

“I know everybody’s name,” he says. His voice is tight and airy. “I have to, to write on the cups.”

“Huh. What about that girl from earlier, the one with pink hair? She had wiggly symbols on her cup.”

Tyler is silent a while longer this time. Josh is about to change the subject, when Tyler says, “She wasn’t human.”

The soft-spoken boy with a broken face looks at the kitchen door behind Josh, then at the grains of sugar still scattered on the table. And Josh can’t figure out if he means it seriously or if he’s just kidding.

“Maybe you should get back to work,” Josh says, because he can see how nervous Tyler looks.

“It’s 2 AM and we’re closed,” Tyler huffs with the ghost of a smile.

It is quite dark, Josh thinks, and quiet. “Is your boss okay with me being here?”

Tyler shrugs and looks at him intently with his one good eye, as if his mind was suddenly set on breaking the rules.

“Ask me how I did it,” Tyler dares.

And Josh doesn’t know how he knows, but he leans closer, lowers his voice and asks, “How did you change your face like that?”

“Defense mechanism,” Tyler explains, but it explains nothing.

Josh continues to stare, perplex.

“Throw something at me,” Tyler whispers, and Josh thinks he must have misheard him. “Come on, throw your cup or something.”

His good eye glints with something malicious, and for the first time he seems truly alive.

So Josh grabs the cup, half-empty, with the name he never gave written on it in neat black letters. He considers it an instant, looking at Tyler’s expecting face across the table. He doesn’t want to hurt him, he barely knows the guy, but curiosity gets the better of him and he throws it without a warning, aiming for the uninjured side of his face.

The cup flies, cold coffee spills on the table, but instead of crashing into the lunatic barista, it goes straight through him, as if he didn’t exist at all. Josh could have sworn he went translucent for a second or two, grinning like a lunatic. It tumbles on the floor behind with a dull sound.

“How…”

“Too slow.” Tyler’s laugh is brittle and joyless.

“Why… How…” Josh’s mind is stuck in a loop, because that’s just not possible, but then again he just saw his cup go through him as if he was a ghost.

He raises a hand and pokes at Tyler’s black shirt. It feels solid enough. Tyler winces. Who knows what other bruises that company shirt is hiding. Anger bubbles in Josh’s chest and he involuntarily clenches his fists. Wrong move, he thinks, when he sees Tyler recoil and lower his head again.

“Why didn’t you do that,” he indicates his own face vaguely, “to protect yourself against whoever did _that_,” he concludes lamely, pointing at Tyler’s black eye.

“It doesn’t work on him.” His voice is strained again, and he rubs at his throat.

“You should quit,” Josh says, half serious.

“You should go,” Tyler replies and he bends down to retrieve his mop.

||-//

Mark is the one who points out just how weird Josh’s behavior is, when he comes back in the middle of the night, looking shaken and bewildered, talking nonsense about mysterious baristas.

“You told me to make more friends,” Josh jokes lamely.

“That hardly qualifies,” Mark says.

“Sometimes I wonder if any of this,” Josh makes a wild gesture, encompassing the fire, the camp, the silent buildings behind, “is worth it. Sometimes I don’t want to live anymore.”

“Don’t say stuff like that, man,” Mark says sternly, but he’s probably used to Josh’s self pity, by now, so he doesn’t seem too worried.

“Maybe I’m here to help that guy, you know. Give my life purpose.”

“I thought we were your purpose,” Mark teases.

“Can’t a dude have two purposes in life?”

“I guess.”

They laugh in the night; they forget the cold and the pointlessness of existence for a moment.

“You should stay away from that DEMA place though,” Mark says, his voice very serious, and it’s sobering.

“How come?” Josh asks. He doesn’t even want to know how he found out that name. When Mark wants a piece of information, he always has less than legal ways to get it.

“I tried to look into it. It’s a shady company. Lots of accusations; accidents and food poisoning. It never goes to court, they always settle before, or the complaints are dropped.”

“Figures...”

More silence, as Josh is debating if he should elaborate further on what he saw. What he thought he saw. Maybe Tyler doesn’t have powers. Maybe the coffees are laced with something and he merely hallucinated the whole thing. However, the bruises were real enough, so he says, “I’m pretty sure his boss is beating him.”

“Can’t he quit?”

Josh winces. It’s not that easy. He remembers when he quit his own job to become an anarchist rebel slash hobo – not, it’s not that easy.

“I think they put drugs in the drinks,” Josh blurts out, which is crazy because he has no proof other than a strange feeling.

Mark perks up at that. “Like ecstasy or something?”

“I don’t know, he didn’t offer a tour of their kitchen,” Josh argues.

“Maybe… Take a picture, get some proof? That way, next time some weird shit happens, you’ll be ready.”

“I’m not sure it’ll help,” Josh mumbles.

“If it doesn’t, we can always set fire to the place, you know.”

Mark squeezes his shoulder and looks at the flames; they reflect in his eyes and he looks properly crazy, but the normal kind, not the evil one.

||-//

Several days pass before Josh goes back to DEMA. Fellow Banditos keep telling him that his obsession with this place is unhealthy, but Josh doesn’t care. If they’re trying to overthrow the rules and live freely, he shouldn’t have to justify his actions to everyone.

He’s there early, and it’s the older man who takes his order, the one with the red apron – coffee, black and a pretzel. His hands are not dirty this time, but Josh can’t help staring, wondering just what exactly that was about. Maybe something broke in the kitchen and he was trying to fix it. Maybe he’s not as evil as his cold stare suggests.

And so he pretends he’s doing research, sitting in the corner, taking notes. Customers come and go, businessmen in a rush in the morning, in and out with a coffee; hipsters and the like later on, with laptops and headphones, Instagraming fancy drinks or posing for pouting selfies. Nothing extraordinary, but Josh can’t shake the feeling of looming threat.

Tyler sort of materializes behind the counter at some point, and Josh can’t figure out if he ghosted through the door or if he lives in a backroom somewhere. His dark hair is all spiky, as if he overslept and just woke up; the bruise is fading, ugly yellow on his cheekbone. He pretends he doesn’t see Josh in the room, and it hurts, for an indiscernible reason.

The music is weird, but after a while, Josh manages to forget about it. It’s jazz, but it’s also staticky and interrupted. It feels like a radio station just too far away, hissing strange messages on the edge of conscious thought. The lights flicker from time to time, as if the room was blinking out, and for a fraction of a second it feels like they’re somewhere else entirely. Then everything rights itself again, and the dull walls and the harsh white lightning are back.

There are no clear indicator of time passing, inside DEMA. You can’t hear the outside world. You can’t see the sun setting slowly. Time isn’t real. Nothing is real. Caramel latte macchiatos are half off.

Josh takes all that in, and he thinks. About what they’re trying to do outside and why he can’t let go of the feeling that something is terribly wrong with DEMA. It’s all in the blank faces surrounding him, the way their eyes glaze over like Tyler’s did, and how they stare absently in the distance.

At one point Tyler passes near his table, arms full of dirty trays and empty cups, and Josh says, “Hi,” and waves his hand.

He gets no reaction. It’s disconcerting, but then he looks at the kitchen and sure enough, a grim silhouette is looking at them through the revolving doors. So he gives up and hopes to catch Tyler on his way home. Does that make him a stalker? It feels a little stalkery all of a sudden.

He gets up to leave. He throws away his cup – no name on it this time – but leaves paper napkins on the table, with a message scribbled on it for Tyler to find. ‘7 Eleven, closing time?’ it reads; there is one two blocks down. He signs “Sahlo Folina”, even though it probably means nothing to the barista.

||-//

It’s cold at night, away from the isolated world of DEMA, away from the bonfires of their little rebel camp – Trench, as Mark says in his videos. Josh stomps and paces the street across the convenience store, hands shoved in the pockets of his too thin jacket, yellow hair hidden under a beanie. The bandana hangs around his neck, but he doesn’t dare put it higher on his face, he doesn’t want the shop employee to call the cops on him.

He thinks Tyler might not show up. Hell, he himself would not meet with a weirdo with dyed hair and a nose ring in the middle of the night. His jacket is torn and taped back up. He looks like a homeless punk. But he keeps pacing anyway.

He’s about to give up when Tyler appears, walking swiftly and looking over his shoulder. It feels like they’re spies in an occupied city, despite the familiar neon lights of the convenience store, and the slow blinking of the stoplights. It feels like an adventure. Tyler sees him and smiles; his face lights up and you can nearly forget the fading bruises. He looks young and weary at the same time.

Josh gets Tyler a blue Slurpee from the old machine inside the 7-Eleven, despite the cashier claiming that it has been broken since forever. It’s way too cold for the current temperature, but Tyler drinks it eagerly, his lips a perfect O around the yellow straw, his cheeks a little hollowed out. Josh doesn’t question or comment his strange choice. He guesses that selling hot beverages all day makes you crave cold ones at night, once you are free from your nightmarish boss. He wants to think Tyler likes him for not asking too many questions, as he huddles closer.

Heat radiates from the barista’s tight frame; he’s way under dressed to be sitting on the curb, in the middle of the night. Josh worries that he has a fever, and he wants to feel his brow to check for temperature, or just to hug him better, but that’s a parent’s role, or a lover’s.

He wants to ask “Are you cold?” but it comes out all wrong and he says, “Do you have a girlfriend?” instead.

Tyler nearly chokes next to him and he pulls the straw out of his mouth to throw him a weird look.

“Boyfriend?” Josh’s voice trails off and he feels like he should drop the subject altogether.

“I used to have a pet cheetah, but Nico took him away,” Tyler says with a frown.

And with that he’s back to drinking his sugary drink. The silence is only interrupted by little slurping sounds that should be disgusting but aren’t, and Josh wonders if Tyler is crazy.

“I’m so sorry I forgot you, earlier” Tyler says, and he sounds sincere. “I forget things sometimes. That’s why I don’t get out much. Inside, my thoughts are contained. But if I get out…”

It doesn’t make a lick of sense, but Josh nods as if it does. He’s eager to know more, to understand and maybe to help. His mom always said he had a heart of gold.

“You should not come to DEMA anymore,” Tyler whispers, and Josh’s heart breaks a little. “It’s not safe… the drinks...”

“It can’t be worse than the blue-flavored abomination you’re drinking right now,” Josh scoffs.

“Oh you don’t want to know what they put in the drinks,” Tyler says in a low voice, as if someone might overhear him.

“Actually, I’m kind of curious,” Josh whispers back. It’s the first time Tyler is talking about what’s wrong with DEMA, he’s not going to let it go that easily.

“There’s chemicals, in the drinks. In the beans, in the sugar, in the milk.”

“Drugs?”

“Makes you crave more. They want to make you forget.”

Josh doesn’t need asking who “they” are. At this point, it’s clear that either Tyler’s boss is a demon or Tyler is suffering from a psychotic break. Or both.

Tyler is shaking, and Josh feels guilty from dragging him outside at such a late hour. Josh asks him if he lives far – he doesn’t want to leave him alone – and once again he instantly regrets it, as the answer is honest and puzzling.

“My house is the one where the vultures are perched on the roof.” Tyler frowns. “Well, they’re on the building across the street, actually. But they never leave.”

||-//

Josh swears he won’t set foot in DEMA again, but he’s back the next day, against everyone’s advice. Tyler greets him as if he was a stranger, but his eyes shine when they land on him, just for a second. He’s a terrible sight, Josh thinks, but he’ll be just fine.

“I didn’t know you guys had a pool,” Josh says, and Tyler looks at him quizzically.

Josh points a finger at the white bottles of chlorine on the counter behind him, and Tyler shrugs, as if to say, no, but who am I to question management.

Josh’s coffee is like venom on his tongue, but he feels like he has to pretend. He sits down and watch. Customers come and go, happy and carefree. Employees come and go as well, and they seem to like their job. Tyler is the only one who looks like a kicked puppy all the time. Josh hopes it’s because he doesn’t drink their own poison and he’s starting to see beyond the illusion.

His cup reads “Sahlo Folina”, and when Tyler passes him to take out the trash, he’s whispering those two words to himself. Over and over like a mantra, like magic words that might set him free. Acting out of impulse, Josh catches his wrist and pulls him into the booth with him. The fake leather creaks and Tyler gasps. Josh is half expecting his boss to barge in and drag him away by the neck. But nothing happens and time slows down as Tyler puts his elbows on the table.

“Do you want to join us?” Josh says. “The Banditos, I mean.” More silence. “The riots–”

“Can’t.” Tyler cuts him, his voice barely a whisper.

Josh is about to disagree, but then he loses his train of thought, because Tyler’s arm tattoos are glowing. He stares, and Tyler doesn’t say anything. The color is faint, purplish-red, but the circles are no longer black; they’re rippling, emitting light. They look hot. Josh approaches a hand to check, but he stops himself before touching. Tyler is looking straight ahead, and he hasn’t moved an inch since he sat down.

“Is it another one of your tricks?” Josh refuses to call it powers.

“Look at the room,” Tyler says as a mean of explanation.

Everyone is frozen in place, baristas handing out cups of no longer steaming coffee, customers petrified in a fake selfie smile or forever drinking. The annoying hipster writing on an expensive laptop next to the window is sitting in front of a full page of gibberish, as his fingers keep pressing the same keys.

Josh giggles, because he doesn’t know how else to react. It’s nice. Even the music is muffled.

“Don’t get used to it,” Tyler says. “I’m not on top of my game.” His voice breaks.

Josh looks at his face, and the way his hair sticks to his sweaty brow, and a pang of concern kills the novelty of the situation. Tyler’s pupils are blown, the iris has nearly totally disappeared.

“Are you high?” Josh asks.

“Have to be.” Tyler shrugs and it means everything and nothing. “Are you disappointed?”

It’s Josh’s turn to shrug. What Tyler has to do to survive is fine with him.

||-//

“You know we can’t help every stray kid society has let down,” Jenna says, in a condescending tone that Josh hates sometimes.

They are inside her tent, and he’s helping her put away canned food a supermarket was going to throw away. Their little camp has become a village. By day, there are barricades and placards and reporters from all around the country. By night they light fires and they dream of a different world.

The authorities have given up trying to dislodge them from the steps of the courthouse. A man died, no older than Josh, under the clubs of riot police. His blood stained the steps for several days until the rain washed it away. Now the government pretends they don’t exist, probably hoping for the movement to die on its own.

“He’s not _any_ kid,” Josh says, already annoyed. “He’s special.”

Jenna turns to look at him, and there is something he doesn’t like in her eye. That’s the look she gets when she sees something she wants. “Could he help us?”

“Maybe...”

Josh doesn’t want to discuss Tyler’s supposed powers because he’s still unsure it’s not just a mass hallucination caused by kitchen fumes. He never really considered it from that angle; what Tyler could bring to their revolution, instead of trying to figure out what he could do to help Tyler.

“He’s… inconspicuous,” Josh ends up saying, rather lamely.

“That’s it?” Jenna raises an eyebrow and waits for more.

“He needs help,” Josh all but whines.

“Don’t we all.”

||-//

They start meeting in secret. It feels like high school again, and kissing under the bleachers, except they don’t do anything, they don’t even hold hands. Sometimes they talk. Sometimes they just sit in silence until Tyler has to get back to work, or it gets too cold to stay out. Josh isn’t sure Tyler sleeps at all. He can wander around the neighborhood at odd hours and more often than not he’ll find Tyler there, looking like he’s sleep walking through a life he hates.

“You should quit,” he keeps saying, but he knows it’s no use. “It’s not healthy,” he repeats, and Tyler just hangs his head lower and hums, as if to say, “I hear you.”

“Nico told me I was just a copy,” Tyler blurts out one morning.

They’re sitting on the wall next to the dumpsters. The frigid air makes little white puffs in front of their mouth, and Josh can’t miss the way Tyler’s shoulders shake. He knows by now it’s not from the cold, but rather the harsh words and their lingering effect. He waits for more, because Tyler can be cryptic, but his ramblings sort of make sense when you listen carefully.

Nico is a controlling freak and he’d say anything to keep Tyler under his thumb, obediently working for him as if it was his own choice. How it came to be that way is a mystery, the same way the Banditos decided one day to unite and fight back. It’s just things that are the way they are even if it’s wrong and it hurts.

“He told me I was his, that I would never escape.”

They had been talking about running away – oh not seriously, and never inside DEMA, but Nico knew, he always did.

“That’s bullshit,” Josh growls, tightening his fists even though Tyler doesn’t like when he does that.

“I guess DEMA controls me,” he laughs, and it’s a joyless sound in the cold air.

The door leading to the kitchen flings open, and they can sense unseen red eyes watching them from inside. Tyler sighs and hops down, before going back to work. He doesn’t wave or turn around, but it’s okay, he won’t forget this time.

||-//

“I’m losing time. Minutes, days sometimes.” Tyler’s voice cracks a little, like he’s trying not to cry.

He presses his palm against his right eye, as if he could get the blackouts to stop, willing his brain into submission. He sighs.

“I don’t remember how we came here. I don’t usually bring people up here.”

He doesn’t say customers, or friends, Josh notes. He’s people. That’s okay.

“We climbed the emergency stairs, on the side,” Josh supplies. “You wanted to show me the vultures.”

“They feed on pain,” Tyler groans. He presses harder and scrunches his other eye shut.

Their legs dangle above the night and it feels right in a deranged sort of way. Clouds part and the moon briefly illuminates the roof opposite, and Josh sees them. Vultures, two of them; gnarly and coiled.

It’s a faded advert on an old billboard, he realizes; he can’t read the brand and he doesn’t remember ever seeing it – it must be pretty old. Their eyes glow in the moonlight, then the night darkens again and shadows engulfs them. Tyler sighs once more, looking at Josh with a newfound intensity. He’s probably just relieved someone could see them as well.

From there, Josh can’t even see the camp, but he knows they’re down there, in the maze of streets and shops. Some of them have been talking about leaving the city for a while. Buying old farms and living together like some sort of commune. He wants to tell Tyler about it, but words elude him. He’s not sure he’ll actually remember in a few days.

“I’m scared all the time,” Tyler says. “Except when I drink DEMA’s poison.”

Josh recoils a little; some things are hard to hear. But talking is good, talking is important.

“What about when you’re with me?” he asks, because apparently there is no filter between his brain and his mouth.

“It helps, to hear my words bounce off of you,” Tyler says with a weary smile.

“Fear doesn’t have to be a bad thing, you know,” Josh insists. He hasn’t given up on making him quit and run away to Trench.

No answer. Tyler is looking at the roof opposite – at the vultures.

“I think I need that poison.” His shoulders hunch and he tries to compress his lanky frame, make himself appear smaller. “Helps my body run.”

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Josh says in a breath.

He tries to convey how much more there is out there, how much hope there could be; even though he’s not sure himself that what they are doing in the streets has any meaning. Tyler grows warmer, next to him, and the ink on his arms glows faintly, orange and red, like flashes. He’s looking at him with eyes too big for his face, like he’s trying to see through Josh, to read his mind. And maybe that’s actually what he’s doing.

||-//

One evening, it starts pouring, suddenly, unexpectedly, and they run all the way to Tyler’s flat. Or rather, Tyler runs, and Josh follows blindly, even though it should be the other way round.

Tyler’s room is so bare and functional it might be sad, if Josh hadn’t been expecting it to look that way. Gray concrete walls, uneven; a cupboard that looks empty save from a few black shirts. Rusted cups on a windowsill.

“Remind me to bring you flowers or something next time,” Josh mumbles, taking in the small unmade bad and the wobbly nightstand.

He shakes his hair – the yellow has totally faded now – and takes off his drenched jacket. He sits down on the gray covers and looks at Tyler’s back in front of the small window. Even in the shadow, he can see the embroidered letters on Tyler’s shirt, mocking him.

From there, they can’t see the vultures on the faded billboard, but they can sense their watchful presence. The sky is as gray as the rest, but the storm is moving away.

There is a box on the nightstand, and Josh opens it without thinking. He’s taken aback when all he finds inside are razor blades, dozens and dozens of them. He bits his lip. He should have asked for permission.

“What do you plan on doing with these?” Josh asks, even though he’s afraid of the answer.

Tyler turns and he looks at Josh and the open box, but his face remains blank; no shame, no sputtered explanations. The box is part of his life, like the vultures or the bruises.

“I’m saving them. For later.” He shrugs and sits down, looking at his hands, at the dark circles around his wrist, like manacles etched on the skin.

Josh stops talking, it’s too scary. Silence stretches out between them, and the rain plays a little staccato rhythm on the roof.

“Sometimes I feel cold, even paralyzed,” Tyler states.

Josh doesn’t want to ask if it’s because of Nico, the shop, the drugs and who knows what else. He wordlessly wraps him in a hug, and pretends it’s because they’re soaked and cold.

“You don’t plan on burning the shop down, do you?” Tyler lets out a nervous chuckle, his face burrowed in Josh’s shoulder.

They should, if only it could set him free. But Josh doesn’t say that. The scales have not yet entirely fallen from Tyler’s eyes and he doesn’t want to freak him out. So he just tightens the hug and doesn’t answer.

||-//

Josh ends up spending the night. He doesn’t even realize he has fallen asleep, until the morning sun wakes him up, and he has to untangle himself from Tyler. He rolls off the bed, and makes his way to the dingy bathroom. The mirror above the sink is cracked and the neon light buzzes annoyingly; his clothes are crinkled, his face looks old. What is he doing?

As it turns out, Tyler doesn’t have any coffee maker in the corner he calls his kitchen – or any coffee, period. They end up drinking tea from rusted cups, and it’s nice. It feels right. Josh says so, because Tyler has been silent since last night, but someone has to speak up at one point. Tyler looks at him and opens his mouth, then closes it again. Everything he wants to say seems to muddle, so he chokes on his words instead; Josh can tell, he knows that feeling very well.

They drink, and Josh washes the cups, and Tyler puts them back on the windowsill. Josh babbles away, about how it’s a beautiful day for making a run for it, and how they’re going to fight, and what the Banditos camp looks like. And Tyler becomes gloomier and gloomier. It’s DEMA calling, but it doesn’t stop Josh from trying to fill the silence with cheery thoughts.

“At night…” Tyler starts, and Josh looks at him expectantly. “At night, I feel there’s spirits in my room. I never know–”

“If they’re real?” Josh finishes for him.

“What they want,” Tyler corrects. “You know, ‘Friend or foe?’”

Josh wonders for a moment if Nico went as far as sending people here to spy on Tyler. Or if the Banditos were curious enough to track him down and watch him. Either way he feels guilty.

||-//

“I think you’re a coward, and you just enjoy cozying up in that damn coffee shop of yours.”

“It’s a horrible place,” Josh protests. He doesn’t say that he hasn’t set foot inside in a while.

“And yet you keep going back there. It’s like you don’t believe in our cause anymore.”

It’s unfair, but Jenna is bitter. She feels like they’re losing, so she lashes out.

“I do.”

“Prove it.”

And so Josh ends up helping a small team of Banditos on their latest mission of destruction. They decapitate the mayor’s statue in a public park and hang the severed head from a tree next to the Town Hall. It’s Mark’s idea, and he films the whole thing. His yellow scarf obscures his face, but Josh can see in his eyes that he is grinning madly.

It doesn’t hit him until much later; that disturbing feeling of dread, somewhere on the edge of his mind, making him sweat for no reason. They are celebrating their little act of vandalism, all around a fire. Josh is slightly drunk on warm beer and moonshine, he’s riding an adrenaline buzz he didn’t know he was missing.

He falls asleep without meaning to, and a vision assaults him, clear as day, nightmarish. There is Tyler, lying on the ground, deathly pale. His eyes are closed but he’s breathing, and when Josh crouches and tries to touch him, he starts to disappear into the earth, sinking into the dark soil. Josh’s mind screams that he’s going to suffocate, while some rational part of his brain knows it’s just a dream. The ground closes over Tyler’s body and flowers start to grow, blood red flowers, and it’s so macabre it’s pretty.

Josh jolts awake with a scream, and all eyes are on him, some wary, some anxious, others downright sneering.

“He’s in danger,” he mumbles, trying to stand up.

He doesn’t even have to explain – they all know who he’s talking about; news travel fast in Trench, and Josh’s little escapades didn’t go unnoticed.

“Go save your zombified boyfriend,” Jenna mocks, and they all laugh.

Josh knows he should try and justify himself, maybe get angry, but he can’t shake the nagging certitude that something is wrong, so he just starts running to DEMA. He’s not a coward, he thinks. He’s ready to fight for the both of them.

||-//

When he reaches the coffee shop, it’s closed and all is dark inside. He goes around the building, feeling crazy, but the pit of anguish in his stomach never stops growing. And then he hears voices, and a sound he can’t really place.

He slows down and hides behind the dumpsters in the alleyway. Might be drunk people fighting. Might be something dangerous. He tries to catch his breath and get a sense of what is going on.

There are shadowy figures, shrouded in red, outside the coffee shop, surrounding another person, up against the wall. Tyler, he realizes, even if he’s guarding his face, arms up like a boxer. Someone is talking, a litany, a growl really. It sounds like a curse or an exorcism, it sounds _bad_.

Josh fumbles on the ground around the trashcans, trying to find a weapon, anything. His fingers curl around a metallic pipe, something that belonged to a dying engine, and he stands up, holding on it for dear life. He’s not a fighter, but he’ll make an exception.

He barrels down and raises his makeshift bludgeon. He might even have screamed something, stop, or don’t touch him, but he’s not sure. Maybe it was just inarticulate yelling. Two of the dark figures turn to look at him and they smile a terrible smile, their eyes hidden by red hoods. Who the hell wears capes in this city, Josh thinks.

The third doesn’t even acknowledge the interruption and his black fist crashes into Tyler’s solar plexus. He looks shocked, and then he blinks, and then he slides down the wall until he’s half sitting half lying there, and it hurts to see him crumpled like that.

“You have no right to be there,” the third figure says.

Nico; Josh recognizes that deep gravely voice. It sounds like nails on a board, like rust and decay.

“You have no right to beat on my friend,” Josh replies, trying to sound braver than he is.

He feels silly with his pipe still held high, but he refuses to back down. He steps forward and tries to move in front of Tyler, to shield him from those lunatics.

“He deserves it. That’s what you get for making too many mistakes.”

“You can’t be serious…” Josh shakes his head, appalled.

“My dear boy, don’t meddle with what you don’t understand. I know your kind. Your little gang outside. You think you’re free. You’re still asleep. Like the rest of them.”

Nico makes as much sense as Tyler on a good day, and Josh shakes his head. He’s trying to figure out how he’s going to get Tyler out of there if he’s unconscious, but then he hears coughing behind him, and Tyler is scrabbling to his feet.

“Run,” he says, and his voice sounds raw.

There are dark marks on his throat, finger-shaped bruises that make Josh shudder.

“Not without you.” Josh shakes his head, and he turns to help him. That’s his mistake, he realizes belatedly.

“How touching,” Nico sneers, and then he’s pouncing on Josh, driving his fist into his face.

||-//

Bits and pieces start to surface. Everything sounds like they’re under water. Maybe they are. Josh tries to shake his head. It doesn’t seem attached to his body anymore. Like that poor mayor’s statue. Fear in his chest. Fire. Or it’s just pain. He can’t tell.

He opens his eyes. The world is tinted red and he panics a little. Blood. Running down his face from a hairline cut. Blood in his eyes. He blinks. He hears footsteps approaching. Faces looking down at him.

Not again. He chokes on a sob and tries to pull himself up, but terribly aware that it’s not going to happen. He flinches when a hand shakes his shoulder. He looks up, expecting evil eyes and a red hood; he sees yellow instead, and he passes out.

||-//

“You were right,” Josh hears, and he opens his eyes to find himself lying on a cot in a tent. It’s daylight outside. He passes a hand on his face and feels stubble under his fingers. He wonders how long he was sleeping – or unconscious.

“It’s 11 AM,” Mark supplies.

Josh realizes belatedly that there are a lot of people in the tent. Jenna is here, and Brad, looking pissed. An angry Brad is a terrifying sight, and Josh is afraid to ask what is going on. Everything hurts, even breathing, so that might be the reason.

“We found you passed out in an alleyway,” Mark says.

His voice is way too loud for Josh’s aching head. His skull is vibrating along with the beating of his heart. He squeezes his eyes shut. He must look green because Jenna asks if he’s going to puke. He doesn’t dare shake his head and clamps his mouth shut instead, breathing hard through his nose.

“Boy, you’re a sorry sight.”

He wants to ask what happened, and why they were looking for him in the first place, but at this point it’s probably best he lets them do the talking.

“Someone beat you up and left you in the street.”

That someone has a name, Josh thinks, and a face he wants to squash, and a voice he hopes never to hear again.

“Brad went to DEMA this morning,” Mark continues.

Josh opens a bleary eye, mouthing, “Tyler?”

“He was there alright,” Brad says through gritted teeth. “Tall skinny dude who looks like he went ten rounds in a boxing ring.”

“Hmm-mm,” Josh confirms. That’s him.

“Well, it’s best you see it by yourself,” Brad sighs.

And before Josh can process that, a camera is shoved under his nose and Brad presses play.

“Brad filmed it,” Mark says. “It’s bad,” he adds.

The footage is shaky and blurry – or maybe it’s the concussion, Josh isn’t sure. Brad must have filmed through a dirty window, somewhere behind the coffee shop. They have a view into the kitchen, and Josh can make out several people standing there.

It’s not well lit and you can’t really see anyone’s faces, but Josh is pretty sure the one leaning against the kitchen counter is Tyler, next to other baristas. It must be Nico facing them, his face hidden in shadows.

“Wha–” Josh starts. There is no sound, only blurry images that make him squint his eyes and hurt his brain, but Mark shushes him.

Then something changes – Brad must have switched the settings or something – and more details appear. Nico is talking, you can see his lips moving, and Josh thinks back to that litany in the alleyway. Is he putting a spell on his workforce?

He turns and fills cups with dark liquid. Could be coffee, could be anything really. Josh can’t take his eyes off the little screen; he’s holding his breath, expecting violence, expecting blood… But Nico raises a dark hand, and he gives a cup to each of the baristas. His movements are slow and deliberate, it’s almost like watching a – very twisted – religious ceremony. And when they take the cups to their lips, and drink it, Nico smiles.

The video becomes black, and Josh wants to scream.

“Wait,” Brad says, “there is more.”

They’re all quiet, as Josh watches, and for a moment he forgets where he is, and he feels like he’s actually there with Tyler. He can hear Nico’s lies, and he can feel Tyler shuddering. He can even taste the poison they just drank, sweet and syrupy on his own lips.

Why does Tyler keep going back to that, he thinks. It’s only abuse. Tyler is a wreck, bruised, face of contusions, but his eyes tell a different story. They are no longer hollow and vacant like they once were; they look like he’s cried so much he decided not to cry anymore, ever. He’s resolute. He’s ready.

When Nico retreats into the dark, Tyler turns and looks up to where Brad must have been hiding outside. There is blood on Tyler’s lips, and his faint grin looks sick. The room is dark, and the marks on his arm are gleaming, warm yellow like the sun.

“We’ll help,” Jenna says, and it’s a promise.

||-//

Deciding on a plan of action takes them longer than Josh is comfortable with. On the other hand, there is still a faint ringing in his head, and he feels wobbly whenever he stands up too fast. For a week, Tyler never goes back to his flat and both the Banditos and the vultures keep watch on an empty room.

Instead, he’s still handing coffees to mindless customers, isolated and silent. So they decide to start a mob outside DEMA, a complete diversion, and snatch Tyler away. Their rescue plan sounds a lot like kidnapping.

They gather plans of the surrounding street, blueprints for the coffee shop and too many weapons. Bats and crowbars, even a small handgun, and Josh doesn’t like that. Not everyone is aware of how weird the DEMA situation is, but everyone agrees on hating chain coffee shops, so that pretty much settles it. The whole thing seems to be out of his hands, but Josh rolls with it the best he can.

They storm the coffee shop in the evening – posing as normal customers, with only yellow tape on their clothes help identify who’s who – while police and protesters are circling outside, like a sick game of cat and mouse.

Tyler is behind the counter, manning the grinder. He pretends he doesn’t notice them, but his body tenses just a little; he knows something is about to go down. No Nico in sight. Josh orders, and his cup reads “Josh?”. It breaks his heart when he spots it.

The noise outside grows louder and invades the quiet little world of DEMA. Even the wannabee writer lifts his head from his forever unfinished book, while a boy with pricey headphones looks through the window with a puzzled expression. Others brandish phones and start recording videos.

Unnoticed, Josh slides over the counter, grips Tyler’s wrist and says, “Let’s go.”

He was expecting Tyler to follow quietly, because that’s how he pictured it in his mind. Both of them running away and disappearing in a cloud of smoke grenade, but Tyler is rooted in place, and Josh pulls at his wrist to no avail.

“You left me,” Tyler chokes out. It sounds like speaking hurts, but he continues, “Eight days straight, eight hours each, and not one line.”

Has it really been that long? Josh is still holding his arm, looking petrified.

“We need to move, now!” someone yells from the door.

It’s war outside, there are screams and stun grenades; trash cans are burning, and smoke billows under the door, white tendrils like ghost fingers, trying to reach them.

“Ty...” Josh all but sobs, when the barista pulls away and rubs his arm like he’s been burned.

“Josh, come on!” Jenna says from the door. She’s holding it open with her foot, her face hidden with a bandana, loose strands of blond hair escaping from underneath her beanie.

“You brought people?” Tyler says, his voice so flat that Josh can’t tell if he’s scared or indignant.

“Sahlo folina,” Josh says. “We help those in trouble.”

For a second, the Banditos feel like his pride, and Josh is a lion; but it all comes crashing down when Tyler starts shaking his head, refusing their help, refusing the situation, gripping the counter as if his life depended on it.

The doors to the kitchen open with a bang as metal hits the wall, letting Nico and several others in. In the middle of the well lit coffee shop, they look unreal, like madmen escaped from a cult. Their hands are black and their eyes glow as red as their aprons. Nobody except Josh and Tyler turns to look at them, it’s as if they don’t totally belong to this world. The customers are lost in a trance, and their lack of reaction might be the scariest thing of all.

“You,” Nico says, when his eyes land on Josh.

He advances, hand raised; Josh tries to back away, until he’s half lying half sitting on the counter. Black fingers linger above his throat, before tightening, in a swift and precise movement that blocks blood flow to his head and makes him feel weak in seconds.

Josh can feel pressure start to possess his mind, and he blindly hopes for Jenna, Tyler, somebody to just do something. The noise outside is impossibly loud now, or maybe it’s just the blood rushing in his ears. He tries to speak but his voice is gone, airway constricting painfully. He croaks, pushing, scratching, to no avail.

The world becomes gray at the edges, darkness is creeping in; then a crack, loud, shattering, and silence. Josh slides to the dirty linoleum behind the counter, not minding the blood and the shards of glass everywhere because he can breathe again, and it’s the best feeling ever.

When the air stops tasting like a forbidden delight, he raises his head and takes in the scene around him. There is a black and red heap lying at his feet – Nico, his oxygen deprived mind supplies – and two other figures farther back, on their knees, frozen like statues. Tyler is sitting cross-legged in the middle of all that, the handle of a broken glass pot still clutched in his hand.

“Thanks”, he tries to say, but then he chokes and sputters. His throat feels like he has swallowed nails.

He wants to ask if Nico’s dead, if Tyler stopped time, if the Banditos are okay. Instead, he gingerly pushes the unconscious body with his boot, and when no gnarly black hand surges to grab his ankle, he starts to calm down.

Tyler still hasn’t moved. He looks like a meditating monk, his eyes are closed, his face relaxed. But the circles around his arm are burning something fierce, and Josh can feel the power emanating from his body.

When Josh gets up, unsteady and slow, he sees that the whole coffee shop is frozen in time. Even the street outside is silent and still. The riot is halted half-way, batons gripped tightly, about to hit, phones brandished and pictures never taken. It’s incredible and a little bit scary. How far does it spread? Is the whole city standing still?

He turns back to Tyler and crouches in front of him, careful not to get glass in his hands and knees.

“I’m okay, you can stop,” he whispers – lies, all lies. “Let’s go,” he pleads.

But Tyler is lost inside his head, trying to find the problem, trying to get a way around it.

“I’m okay,” he repeats, with more conviction this time. “Let me help?”

And with that, Tyler collapses, and the world starts moving again.

||-//

“What the hell was that?” someone shouts.

Rioting is still raging in the street, as if it never stopped, but some of them can sense the shift in reality that just happened. When Josh finally comes out of the coffee shop, he has Tyler’s slack arm flung around his neck, so heavy now that he’s unconscious. Jenna is on his heels, covering them, making sure nobody is following.

“Back to the camp,” Josh grunts, huffing as Tyler’s feet scrap the pavement, trying to hoist him higher.

Smoke grenades fill the atmosphere, and figures sporting yellow bandanas continue to antagonize the police to make sure they can escape undetected. They all know what they have to do, and the back alleys to take in order to disappear quickly.

Josh briefly wonders if the customers still inside DEMA will have any proof to post on social networks, if they’ll talk about what they saw, or if everything will be forgotten as soon as the dust settles. Hipsters don’t believe the hype anyway.

||-//

The camp feels safer and homier than it has ever been that night. Two of their own got arrested during the riot, but no one worries much. Banditos always slip through the system, now that most of the city’s CCTV is down – mysteriously vandalized night after night. Spirits are up, bonfires are blazing and the booze is flowing. And right there, right now, Josh couldn’t be happier.

Tyler is sleeping – not unconscious, actually sleeping, their medic confirmed – and Josh is making sure no one disturbs him. He’s sitting close by, with an unobstructed view of the tent in which he lays. People are talking and laughing, but Josh doesn’t feel like taking part. His own throat still feels sore, and he can tell he has some colorful bruises blossoming there, without checking in a mirror. Their medic prodded and tsk-ed, but assured him nothing important had been crushed. Maybe his pride, if only a little bit.

Mark joins them at one point, with a bunch of yellow papers he printed who knows where, and starts talking about Nico – or rather how that name never appears anywhere in the corporation’s official papers, and how he’s not even sure he really exists. Josh knows that his account what went down that evening is hard to believe, and that he’s the only one apart from Tyler who’s ever interacted with the evil boss. He shrugs and doesn’t try to defend his version. Nico is bad news, official or not.

The fire dies down, as well as the conversations. The night gets colder and everyone retreats, either to their tent or their apartment, for the ones who still haven’t fully committed to the cause. Bandito one day, blue collar the next. Josh is debating whether he should sleep on the floor in his tent, or leave Tyler some room and go bother Mark or Brad.

He’s about to go check on him, more for his peace of mind than anything else, when a strangled scream briefly pierces the night. Everyone still there turns to look at Josh’s tent, and then everyone avoids him, as if to say, “you deal with it.”

He doesn’t know what to expect, when he pushes the tarp and gets into the dark tent. Tyler has fallen silent, lying on his side, his back to Josh. He makes sure to stomp and signal his presence, but he feels dumb and too tall, not knowing what to do. A sob wrecks Tyler’s frame, and he tries to stifle it.

“What if I’m still asleep?” Tyler whines. “What if I never left?”

At that, Josh strides to the cot and sits down, carefully pushing Tyler’s legs aside. He reaches in the half light and clasps a shoulder. The black DEMA shirt is way too thin, drenched in sweat, that can’t be a good sign.

“You did, you’re awake,” Josh repeats.

He holds him, and rocks him, and hugs him. Tyler is bawling into his jacket; he’s clutching it, like it’s a lifeline. Josh is thankful nobody comes to investigate, because Tyler’s tattoos are glowing again, faint yellow like his hair used to be. He cries himself to sleep and Josh doesn’t dare move, lying half awake on the cramped cot with Tyler in his arms.

||-//

In the morning he gets Tyler a warmer shirt, and introduces him to his friends. The (former) barista looks like a deer in the headlights most of the time, but Josh fears it’s just a consequence of being outside. Freedom can be scary sometimes. He stares at the bonfire and refuses coffee; he lets Jenna put yellow tape on his pant leg, that got ripped during their escape. He hums to himself and seldom speaks, but Josh makes sure nobody bothers him. They mostly don’t care anyway – everyone is welcome to stay in Trench.

The shakes come later, as the night creeps up, when smalls teams come back with empty spray cans and huge smiles. Sometimes deteriorating billboards and public property is just enough to lift spirits up. Tyler’s spirits are down, and he’s spiraling, letting Josh maneuver him back into his tent.

“My best guess is withdrawal, probably from anti-depressants, even though I can’t be sure without a blood work,” the camp medic tells Josh after a short exam.

He brushes his hair back, looking young and tired. Josh is pretty sure he was a medical intern – or maybe he still is. He always seems unsure of himself, but Josh has seen him give stitches and bind sprained limbs. He trusts him.

“Is he an addict?”

“Not by choice,” Josh sighs.

“He’s going to feel rough for a couple of days, make sure you keep an eye on him.”

He starts listing possible symptoms, and Josh nods dutifully despite feeling overwhelmed and out of his depth. He guesses he’s Tyler’s keeper now, until he feels better, or Nico comes back for him. He shudders at the sinister thought, and spends the rest of the night keeping vigil with a flashlight and stolen blueprints, trying to drown himself into the next step of their little rebellion, which involves breaking and entering, stealing and blackmailing. Fun days ahead.

Tyler sleeps through all that, restless and twitching, sweaty and shuddering. Josh doesn’t dare imagine what he’s dreaming about, he only hopes he’s not back _there_.

At morning he sits up in the bed and scares the hell out of Josh, who has fallen asleep among crumpled papers and scribbled notes.

“I don’t know which way I’m going,” he says, his eyes unfocused, his fingers twitching as if electricity was coursing through them, “but I can hear my way around.”

He stares some more, looking at something only him can see, tilting his head sideways, listening, but there is nothing to be heard.

Josh grunts something non-committal from where he is sitting, and that’s apparently enough because Tyler drops back and scrunches his eyes closed.

For the next couple of days, they have several other weird, feverish one sided conversations like that, late at night, early in the morning, when the air is crisp and silent. Tyler seems tuned to something he’s the only one to perceive, and Josh thinks back to the radio station and its intermittent static, back inside DEMA.

||-//

A sense of normality slowly settles back – as normal as life in an illegal camp in the middle of a city paralyzed by strikes can be – and Banditos start to get antsy. Jenna wants to carry on with their plans, and they need Josh to pick locks and keep watch – or maybe they are just telling him that to make him feel useful, he can never know. He’s reluctant to leave Tyler that evening, but he assures him he’ll be fine.

Things go bad, because they always do. They get separated, and lose some of the documents they went to steal. Josh is pretty sure his ankle is sprained, or at least badly bruised; he had to jump from a window, of all things.

But he tries to push the pain aside, and he trudges through the street, hood low on his face, to protect him against the light drizzle that makes everything damp and sad. The USB key in his pocket feels heavy, like a bitter victory. They’re going to destroy some corrupt CEOs’ lives, and it should make him happy but it doesn’t.

When he reaches the camp, the night has fallen, and everything is in shambles. He nearly crashes into Brad as he tries to see what the commotion is about.

“Dude, you shouldn’t have ditched your phone,” he says, shaking him slightly.

“What happened?” Josh asks uselessly, taking in the burnt tents and the supplies scattered around.

“Some guys came in, took your pet project by the collar and dragged him away.”

Josh breaks out in a cold sweat, and it feels like Nico’s black hand is crushing his heart this time.

“When?” he demands, and the wild look in his eye make Brad stutter.

“Not long, like half an hour?”

“Why didn’t you stop them?” he barks.

“They tried to torch the place,” Brad defends himself, rather lamely if you ask Josh. “There was nothing we could do...”

Josh wants to get mad, but there is no time.

“Who was that, his dad?” an indignant voice asks, from behind a tent still intact. It’s someone who doesn’t know the whole story, and how dangerous Nico is.

“Worse, his boss,” Brad says. There is no trace of humor in his voice.

“Welcome to Trench,” someone whispers ominously, as if it summed up the whole situation.

A world in which capitalism jumped out of the shadows and pulled you back as soon as you thought you were free from its clutches. Josh starts running to DEMA, rain and sprained ankle be damned.

||-//

Josh knows something terrible happened way before he reaches the coffee shop. The street is blocked, and there are a few people gawking from the sidewalk opposite, despite the late hour. The firemen have turned the lights and sirens off, but the red truck stands out against the gray of the city, concrete and asphalt.

DEMA burned, DEMA is no more.

Josh elbows onlookers and tries to get closer, craning his neck to see inside. The flames are now small and twisted under the fire hose, like hissing animals caught in a trap. The front store is blackened and the windows are cracked, blown by the intense heat. Smoke fills out the dark interior of the shop.

Josh paces and swears; what if Tyler’s inside, what if there are people still inside? He tugs at his hair under the hood, as if to silent that fleeting thought about rushing in, but he’s not brave, and he’s not crazy. Then he overhears people talking about a vandal, and he perks up at that, because he lost his.

“Oh yeah, sad looking boy, with a rebel jacket, smelling like gasoline. He took off before help arrived,” a man is saying.

“Where?” Josh all but cries. “Where did he go?” he asks, fighting back the need to shake the gossipy store owner until he answers.

The man raises a shaky hand, in the direction of Tyler’s flat, where the vultures are. Josh takes off limping, cursing the rain that is not abating, and hoping Nico burned inside the shop.

He doesn’t even go to Tyler’s sorry excuse of an apartment; he climbs the emergency stairs of the building opposite instead. He can’t explain why, but the vultures act like a beacon, and he knows that’s where he’ll find Tyler. They feed on pain, he said, so that’s probably where he is right now.

The roof is covered in gravel, and Josh is not exactly discreet, he huffs and plods until he reaches the edge. A flash of lightning briefly illuminates the lone silhouette standing on the ledge behind the railing, head bowed.

“Ty?” Josh ventures.

He raises his hands in front of him, even though Tyler can’t see him, as he approaches slowly. The other boy exhales and it makes a little white cloud in the chill air.

“I heard them talk,” Tyler tells the abyss, his voice barely audible.

“Nico? He’s full of–” Josh starts, furious, and he takes another step, hand closing on the railing while all he wants to grab is Tyler.

“Him. And your friends. Banditos,” Tyler spits out slowly, as if every word hurt. He turns briefly, and his expression morphs to something akin to disgust.

“What–”

“Don’t pretend you didn’t know!” Tyler warns, cutting him off again.

He moves a little farther, and his feet are so close to the edge that Josh has to hold tight on the railing to keep the vertigo at bay. This is not happening.

“I don’t, I swear,” Josh repeats, letting go with one hand to make a placating gesture.

But he doesn’t dare touching him, not when he looks so mad and so lost. Betrayed. Warmth radiates from his body, despite the cold rain that is getting worse.

“Please don’t…”

Jump? Josh can’t even finish his sentence.

“They said they wanted to use me. My powers.” Tyler’s mouth twists into a parody of a smile.

It hurts because it’s probably true. Mark must have talked, or someone who was at DEMA during the riot, but Josh is sure they didn’t mean it that way. He tries to explain, tries to reason, but Tyler is not having any of it.

“Nico said the same thing. That you only wanted to use me.”

“Nico can kiss my–”

“Don’t,” Tyler whispers. “A curse from you is all I would need right now.”

Tyler’s voice is cracking, and his face is wet. It can’t all be from the rain. He sounds weary and way too young. His battered shoes scrape the cement ledge, and Josh’s sanity is already plummeting. Tyler starts rambling, muttering, “Neon gravestones try to call for my bones,” while looking at the city below. And no matter how hard Josh looks, he can’t see the neon or the gravestones, only sad city lights, blurred because of the storm and because he’s crying as well.

“I don’t understand,” he wants to say. “You’re not making any sense.”

But some part of him feels the weariness and the call of the void. He does understand, somehow. Doesn’t mean he approves.

Tyler lets go of the railing and he starts to fall forward; Josh scrambles over the fence and latches onto his arm. The jacket rips, yellow tape not strong enough. It’s all DEMA’s fault, Josh thinks bitterly, and he feels the world tilt as he slips and loses his grip on the roof.

For a brief moment that seems eternal, they are suspended above the gray of the night and the neon lights. Then gravity comes back and they fall.

Until they don’t.

Tyler blindly reaches for Josh and pulls him into a tight hug, his face buried in his chest like that night in the tent. He breathes out and they stop falling. They’re levitating. Suspended into thin air, trapped in a scientifically impossible miracle.

Josh opens eyes he never meant to close and raises his head to look at the vultures above. He can’t tell if they’re disappointed because there won’t be guts splattered on the pavement or ecstatic because of the pain yet to come. He sounds just like Tyler now.

“Tyler, what happened to Nico?” Josh says, because he’s panicking and it’s only thing that crosses his mind and he has to ask.

He winces when Tyler flinches so much he nearly drops him.

“I burned DEMA,” Tyler huffs into his chest.

“I saw,” Josh confirms, “but where is Nico?” he presses.

“Inside, I think.”

Tyler’s voice is small and squeaky, like a scared child’s. Josh is about to say that everything will be okay, but he stops himself – no lies, no more.

“We’ll make sure,” he offers instead, and Tyler silently nods.

Their feet touch the ground, and Josh finds that his legs are so shaky he has to sit down. The whole thing seems unreal, but his pants are wet from sitting in a puddle, his damp hoodie clings to his body, and Tyler is radiating warmth at his side. The pouring rain hurts his face. It can’t all be a dream.

||-//

No one knows how to react when Tyler and Josh come back to the camp in the middle of the night, drenched and huddled together. Josh is pretty sure he has a murderous expression on his face, and people were already walking on eggshells around Tyler – but apparently not enough, since they caused him to believe Nico’s lies once again.

He’s half way into trying to get a catatonic Tyler out of his wet clothes when Jenna, of all people, timidly pokes her head into the tent. She’s holding flimsy emergency blankets and mismatched clothes that she sets on the plastic table.

“Let me help,” she whispers.

Josh nods, because his voice is gone and he can’t feel his fingers anymore. Jenna unbuckles Tyler’s pants, and they maneuver him into dry sweatpants. His eyes are open but he doesn’t seem to care anymore, he just lets it happen. It’s scary to see so little fight left in him.

“I’m sorry,” Jenna says, when Josh is dressed as well, feeling scratchy and cold. “I’m sorry,” she repeats. “They took the camp by surprise, they...” her voice trails off under Josh’s hard glare.

They nearly jump when Tyler mumbles into the bundle of covers thrown on the cot, his words jumbled and nearly unintelligible.

“Cowards only come through when the hour's late,” he says, and for once they’re both sure who he’s talking about. “When everyone’s asleep,” he adds. He turns his face towards Josh, eyes unseeing, bottom lip nearly bitten through.

“You’re awake, we’re awake,” Josh affirms, not minding Jenna’s weird look.

That night they both stay inside Josh’s tent with Tyler, and neither of them dare sleeping. They keep the storm lanterns on until the morning comes.

Later, they assess and they rebuild, like they always do. Two tents burned down, four people got slightly injured, and everyone feels bad for letting one of their own – even if the addition was very recent – get taken away. So when Josh calls for a general assembly – something they stopped doing when the authorities started looking the other way instead of trying to get them to leave, and the situation got stalled into normalcy – everyone is quick to respond.

Most faces are unfamiliar now. Josh was one of the firsts to take to the streets, because he needed to give his life some purpose, but the movement grew so much these past few months that he feels like an impostor all of a sudden.

Tyler is sitting behind him on the courthouse steps. He’s clutching his legs and his chin rests on his knees. He still looks very lost, taking in the crowd with a puzzled expression. He listens to Josh with a bewildered look, as if he was hearing the story for the first time – his story.

Not everything makes sense, because Josh spares no details. Not everyone seems convinced, but they do listen until the end. They probably think he turned mad, but he couldn’t care less. He assigns missions – check out the morgues and listen in to police chatter, just _find_ those red-clad bastards – and then mostly everyone disperses.

Jenna is one of the first stragglers to come forward, and she nearly sounds guilty when she confesses, “I did speculate on how useful Tyler could be to the cause. But that’s not all I said,” she quickly adds. “I think my exact words were, ‘I’m glad Tyler’s here because Josh will finally be able to focus again.’”

And Mark continues, “I’m the one who suggested Tyler joined us. I might have talked about his powers. I mean, what I saw was insanely awesome and–”

Josh raises a hand to cut him off.

“I’m sorry,” Mark says sheepishly. “You know how I can be, I get excited and… Is he okay?” he suddenly asks, and they all look at Tyler, who is humming out of tune and rocking slightly.

“He will be,” Josh sighs. “He’s just… drained?”

“I’m tired,” Tyler murmurs, to no one in particular, “of tending to this fire.”

It’s a weak and cryptic confirmation that Josh is correct, if anything.

||-//

Days pass and the city burns. Groups of Banditos roam the streets at night with torches. Tyler’s act of desperation to free himself from DEMA was apparently the spark everyone was waiting for. Media are interested again; fire sure looks good on television.

Charred bodies disappeared from the city morgue, and no one knows who they belonged to. After a while, authorities and Banditos stop trying to track them down.

Josh and Tyler go back to the coffee shop one early morning. They don’t discuss it, it just sort of happens. They stand a long time in front of the blackened shell of the shop, hollowed out and sinister. Someone left a bouquet of sad looking yellow daisies, propped up against the wall. The rain is turning to snow, and the streets are mostly deserted. People care a lot less about what may be happening around them when the air hurts your face and sleet gets in your eyes. They slip in, despite the police tape.

Josh tries to remember the layout of the place, standing near what used to be the counter. The register has melted into the furniture, and the coffee machines behind it are unrecognizable. It smells like gas and ashes; coffee is just a memory. Everything is eerily silent, without the quiet chatter of customers, the hissing of the coffee machines and the weird ambient music.

Tyler ventures farther, into the kitchen, glass and debris crunching under his shoes. Josh goes after him, careful not to touch the scorched doors. He’s half disappointed when the kitchen turns out to be mostly intact, and totally boring. He was expecting remnants of dark rituals and bottles of chemicals everywhere, but either the place has been cleaned out by the police or he has too much imagination.

Tyler hops onto a counter-top, not minding the soot that covers every surface. Josh just stands there awkwardly, toying with the bandana around his neck. For a while neither say anything, but the silence becomes heavy, and they both try to fill it at the same time.

“What are–”

“Do you think–”

They both stop, and Tyler smiles, and it’s the most precious thing ever. It’s lopsided, and full of crooked teeth, but it’s a step in the right direction at least.

“Go on,” Josh says.

“Do you think I’m insane?”

It’s a candid question, and it deserves some thought. A quick “Aren’t we all?” isn’t going to cut it. Josh looks back to the dark, emptied out coffee shop, then to the tired barista staring at him expectantly, and he’s at a loss for words.

Tyler must sense it, because then he says, softly, “What were you going to say?”

“What are we going to do now? With _them_ still at bay somewhere?”

They don’t pronounce Nico’s name anymore. It was a nickname anyway, Tyler explained one night; there were nine of them, controlling different places, siphoning out people’s thoughts and emotions, feeding on them like leeches.

Tyler’s smile is just a memory now, and his eyes cloud over for a second. Josh snaps his fingers next to his face, even though Tyler hates when he does that.

“Sorry,” Tyler winces.

He rubs at his arm absentmindedly. The tattoos never glow anymore now. Something in his eyes tells Josh he’s not entirely sure he’s really awake, despite everyone in Trench making sure he feels welcome.

“We could leave the city,” Josh suggests, but he knows the answer before he hears it, because it’s always the same.

“In time,” Tyler says. “For now, I will stay alive.”

That’s a good resolution, and Josh can work with that. Maybe they’ll steal money from corrupt politicians and buy back the dead husk of DEMA. Maybe they’ll build a new shop in its place, together.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think? (I may be working on a sequel.)
> 
> [Moodboard?](https://sarcasmcloud.tumblr.com/post/187695494391/drink-it-anyway-a-dema-verse-coffee-shop-au-in)


End file.
